MONTGOMERY — Momentum shifts can sometimes be everything in football.
Unfortunately for the Montgomery High School football team Friday night, the momentum swings just weren’t going its way.

There were some execution errors for the Cougars against Hillsborough on offense and defense, but some momentum swing plays, such as a blocked punt that turned into a quick seven points for the Raiders in the fourth quarter, were a large factor in the crushing 38-16 defeat Friday night.

Montgomery took a 10-7 lead into halftime, but in the second half — in particular a stretch in the late-third to early-fourth quarter where the Raiders scored 21 points in less than 6 minutes — the Cougars fell apart.

“What I took away from it is we didn’t do what we needed to do,” Montgomery head coach Zoran Milich said.

“We played very sloppy in that second half, and we’ll look at reasons why, there’s a lot of things. But, without making any comments until I see the film specifically, we’ll address that with the team.”

Montgomery gave up a score early to Hillsborough’s dynamic duo of quarterback Rob Nittolo and wide receiver Dan Stoddard, but came back to take the lead before the half.

Pass coverage issues and an inability to get anything going on the ground plagued the Montgomery offense, however, and Stoddard and Nittolo continually tormented the Cougar defense through the air.

Milich saw a great first half of football from his team, but, uncharacteristically, not so much in the second.

“We got beat up pretty good in the second half,” Milich said.

“We did not play 48 minutes of football, we played a first half. There were a lot of our mental mistakes out there on our part.

“And we had some injuries, but no excuses, we didn’t play the last 24 minutes.

Hillsborough did. We played 24 minutes the first half, they played 48 minutes of football. And that’s kind of what we’re used to doing is playing 48 minutes of football.”

In their coach’s eyes, the problems that plagued the Cougars last night can be solved by fixing some mental miscues.

“We’ve got to make plays,” Milich said.

“Bottom line. We’ve got to make plays on offense, special teams and defense, and we didn’t make plays. We didn’t make plays coming out of halftime, we dropped a lot of balls, we missed some tackles, we misaligned at times.

“We did a lot of things that I think we can correct, but just for whatever reason, we didn’t get the job done. Give credit to Hillsborough, they got the job done.”

The 4-3 Cougars now have a date with 4-3 Immaculata next week at home for Senior Night.